Iolo technologies has released System Mechanic 11.5, the latest edition of its flagship PC maintenance and optimization suite.

And the company points to the new Guided Recommendations as the highlight of this build, claiming they “harness the collective intelligence of the entire System Mechanic community base”, in particular when helping to figure out exactly which startup tools you need to run, and which you can safely do without.

(Which sounds very similar to the cloud-based approach used by some other products, actually, but we’re not complaining. Anything which helps more reliably manage your startup programs is fine by us.)

Iolo also says System Mechanic 11.5 isn’t just Windows 8-compatible; this version has been specifically designed to work and expand on the new operating system, and so should deliver notably better results.

As usual, the latest System Mechanic release includes more Tune-up definitions, specific fixes to help detect and resolve thousands of potential PC performance and stability issues.

And perhaps most interesting of all, System Mechanic 11.5 is now available under a new Whole Home License, which means there’s no longer any “per PC” restriction: just buy one copy of the program, and use the same activation key to install it on each of your home systems.

Surprisingly, there’s no extra payment or price increase involved – no catch at all (not that we’ve spotted yet, anyway). The program used to be licensed per PC, now it’s per home, a much simpler system which we can only hope catches on elsewhere.